JetBlue’s latest sale offers up to $300 off flight and hotel bundles to vacation hotspots across its network, including Aruba, Cancun, Montego Bay, Punta Cana, Nassau, Los Cabos and St. Lucia.
17.10.2023 - 21:39 / forbes.com / Richard Branson / Star
Most people who have visited the Caribbean are familiar with the island of St. Barthélemy (a.k.a. “St. Barts”) in the French West Indies.
Even though it’s not technically “private”, the cost of getting there and the price tag to stay there generally keeps it restricted to the 1%. That fact alone makes it seem almost private.
Most people have also heard of Necker Island in the British Virgin Islands, owned by Sir Richard Branson and arguably the world’s hardest-to-get-into private island resort—that is, unless you have $120,000/week to buy it out and can compete with J. Lo or Lionel Messi for the privilege to do so.
Scattered around the Caribbean are a dozen or so other private island resorts that have been developed. Half are purposefully low-key and off-the-grid, offering guests quiet communion with nature. The other half have mastered the art of staying coy and keeping the Page Six paparazzi at bay while offering ludicrously laid-back luxury in the middle of nowhere.
This is a story about the only one of them—Petit St. Vincent, or “PSV” as it’s locally known in the Grenadines—that’s managed to pull off being both.
But a little background first.
A little over 25 years ago a friend and I tried to buy a private island off the northern Caribbean coast of Honduras. It wasn’t one of the aforementioned dozen since it technically wasn’t a resort, though it did have half a dozen thatched huts that you could rent on the beach if your vacation plans included getting gored overnight by sand fleas.
Back then, the island, called Barbareta, consisted of roughly 360 acres of old growth tropical rainforest, seven beaches, a protected deep-water cove, and several untouched indigenous ceremonial sites. It also already had a dirt runway onto which a half dozen Honduran pilots could “short” land a puddle-jumper without skidding into the water.
My friend and I were 25 years old at the time and knew nothing about putting a real estate deal together. But we somehow managed to sling together just enough reality and hyperbole to get ourselves the meetings we needed to nudge the dream along.
We drew up plans for an eco-friendly, renewably powered community of 40 or so sustainable homes anchored by a boutique hotel, a beach club, marina, spa, and coral-to-kitchen waterfront restaurants all surrounded by protected areas, hiking trails, treetop zip lines, and conservation projects with the world’s leading scientific institutions.
After pitching our idea around, we eventually found an investment group in South Carolina, signed a letter of intent with the island’s owners, and initiated proper feasibility studies. For three or four months through the fall of 1998, we actually thought that we could pull it off.
Then on Oct 3rd
JetBlue’s latest sale offers up to $300 off flight and hotel bundles to vacation hotspots across its network, including Aruba, Cancun, Montego Bay, Punta Cana, Nassau, Los Cabos and St. Lucia.
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